First Minister Alex Salmond has told financiers that innovation and advances in clean green energy present a "pivotal turning point in human history".

He also urged private finance leaders to seize the multi-billion pound opportunities arising from the renewable and low carbon technology revolution.

Salmond's comments came as he opened the Scottish Low Carbon Investment conference in Edinburgh - where more than 450 leading figures from international finance, energy and other sectors are gathered to explore opportunities and help accelerate private investment in a global market that is forecast to grow to £4.3 trillion by 2015.

The First Minister also unveiled an industry-led Offshore Wind Route Map, setting out the key actions required in the coming years to fully realise the huge potential around the coast of Scotland - estimated to have a quarter of Europe's potential offshore wind and tidal capacity and a tenth of its wave resource.

Salmond said: "This is more than a once-in-a-generation opportunity such as North Sea Oil and Gas was.

"The move to renewable energy is fundamentally different from the move from wood to coal or coal to oil and gas. That was just moving from one limited form of carbon based energy to another.

"Renewable energy is different: the wind and the waves will be with us forever. Once we make that shift to renewable energy, there will be no going back."

The conference heard that in Scotland up to 60,000 new green jobs could be created across the low carbon sector by the end of this decade - some 28,000 of them directly servicing domestic and worldwide offshore wind markets.

The First Minister told delegates "Capital may be difficult to get but the renewable resources of our land and sea are scarcely touched and now opening up.

"While we won't find all of the financing solutions this week, we know that it has been done before with North Sea oil and gas a generation ago. And we can do it again on the same scale. Let's get down to work and bring our renewables revolution closer to reality."